


i'm in the graveyard if looks could kill

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Breaking Up & Making Up, Cop!Keith, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Married Life, Meet-Cute, Misunderstandings, Office Worker!Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:43:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Keith is a cop who looks like a delinquent. Shiro is his buff and sweet office worker husband. They make it work—mostly.This is the part where he gathers Shiro up and carries him out of here and they rebuild their life together, away from whatever this is—Shiro sighs and closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is my fault. I can't believe I let you watchJohn Wickfour times in one weekend."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I write a lot for myself that I don't have any excuse for, so without explanation please take this extremely specific and weird AU that I can't stop writing one shots for.

They've been married for almost two years the first time Shiro lies to him—really lies.

There's a certain amount of necessary wiggle room in any good relationship. Keith didn't know that going in, but he's learned it through trial and error. Shiro claims to love Keith's cooking on the rare occasion he has to attempt it, never comments on how long it's been since he washed his jacket, and pretends Keith’s driving doesn’t give him heart palpitations. In return, Keith pretends Shiro's love for boxed mac and cheese is charming and not borderline untenable, that Shiro really is great at karaoke, and that yes, of course that horror movie scared him, too.

Shiro is, objectively, his better half. If he doesn't have Shiro—if he doesn't have Shiro's trust—he doesn't have anything, which is why it's so jarring to get home from work on a Thursday and find him gone.

Thursdays are what pass for date night. Shiro makes dinner and Keith hovers, not touching anything food related that Shiro doesn't explicitly tell him to, and they talk. Between working fulltime and making their fixer upper livable, it's the only time they have to breathe.

Keith walks in fresh off a long shift, but still earlier than usual. There was a day that six didn't qualify as early, but that was before the house and before their first anniversary. The house is dead silent. Keith double and triple checks the date—definitely Thursday—checks his phone for messages, and thenthen  kicks the panic that's running through the back of his mind. They're adults, traffic is a thing and Shiro drives to work now. There is absolutely no reason to call him.

He texts, twice, instead.

It feels like an hour passes while he waits for a reply, but when he checks it’s only been ten minutes. Patience is a virtue he lacks, Shiro never tires of reminding him in the kindest terms possible. He waits another two minutes and calls.

It rolls over to voicemail without ringing. Shiro’s recorded voice is smooth, even over the tinny speakers. The message is standard, impersonal, but Keith gets a little lost in the sound of him assuring Keith he can leave his number after the beep, until the tone shakes him out of it—too late to stop it from recording a message.

There's no way, he tells himself as one hour passes into two. There's no way anything is actually wrong. He would know.

He sits as still as possible with his cell clutched in both hands, so tight he has to remind himself not to break it, waiting and waiting. 

The hum of the opening garage door is the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. It breaks the silence so suddenly he jumps and then he doesn’t run, but walks with casual speed into the garage and pulls Shiro out of the car and into a casual hug that isn’t intended to crush the life out of him but nearly does.

“Keith? God—my phone went dead. I’m so sorry,” Shiro says, returning the hug one-armed.

“It's ok,” Keith mumbles, trying not to be obvious about breathing in the smell of him.

“No, it’s not.” He buries his fingers in Keith's hair, pulling gently until his head is tilted to meet Shiro’s gaze. “I made you worry,” he says, almost wondering. It's the reverse of their usual dynamic—Shiro is the worrier, but only because Keith hides it better. “Hey. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Keith sits on the counter while Shiro makes dinner, one foot propped up on it so he can rest his head on his knee as he watches Shiro cook. Shiro glances at the foot like he’s going to scold him for it, but he's still treating Keith like glass, so he lets it go.

“Is everything ok at work?” Keith works up the courage to ask, finally. Shiro respects his privacy, respects his boundaries, and Keith has more than most. That's what made them work, and he wants to return the favor, but— “It's ok," he amends. "You don't have to talk about it.”

Shiro glances up from the pan of stir fry he’s stirring, eyebrows quirked. “What?”

It was a mistake to ask. It’s none of his business. Trust, that’s what they agreed on. Trust and patience. He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

Shiro searches his face for another moment, hand stilling over the stove before his eyes go wide.

“Oh! Work. Yeah, everything is—great.” Shiro looks away, messing with the dial on the stove. No— _pretending_ to mess with the dial on the stove. “It’s all great. We just had a—surprise. Thing. For a client.”

It’s the most blatant lie Keith has ever heard in his life, and Shiro is good at lying, usually. World class, in fact. There’s a moment where he wants to push it, or falling that push _him_  up against the counter until he’s babbling all his secrets, but no. If he’s lying, there’s a reason for it.

Patience and trust. He can let it slide.

 

* * *

 

It keeps sliding for a solid two weeks before he cracks.

Shiro starts getting home late, habitually. He texts a warning every time after the disastrous first, but Keith gets used to him rolling in the door after dark, sleeves rolled up, hair messy.

He's not stupid. The obvious answer is also the ugliest, but he dismisses it out of hand. Shiro isn't cheating. That’s not an option—but he drags to Shiro to bed the third night he gets home late and spends the next hour taking him apart just to check. When Shiro's shaking and wet, chest heaving under Keith’s hands, he’s positive—no one else has touched Shiro.

They’ve had their problems, but that's never been one of them. Whatever he's hiding, it’s not a sudden lack of passion.

A week in, Keith pushes him against the door when he walks in from the garage. Shiro wears suits to work and there's something indulgent about half-stripping him out of something that cost a few hundred dollars, and Keith's no expert, but he knows how to use his mouth. 

He knows how to ruin Shiro. A little, vengeful part of him wants to prove it to both of them. Keith pulls out every dirty trick in Shiro's book and doesn't stop until Shiro begs him to.

“You've been—really attentive lately—" Shiro gasps when he’s coherent again. It takes almost a full minute for him to manage it.

Keith looks up at him through his wet bangs. He likes Shiro any way he can have him, but this—shirt undone, tie half-loose around his neck, overcome—is hard to beat.

Shiro meets his gaze and mutters a curse, covering his eyes. “You can't just do this.”

“Yeah, I can.” Keith wipes at his mouth and hair. “We're married.”

Shiro isn't cheating, but something's up.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t have proof Shiro is lying until he gets on Allura’s Instagram and sees her posting photos at their favorite bar while Shiro is ostensibly at work, helping her with their Problem Client. Shiro isn't present, and that's something at least. Keith isn't sure what he would do if the simple truth of Shiro not being around is nothing more incredible than what Keith has always feared was inevitable: Shiro, growing tired of spending time with him.

It's still a possibility, but he tries to discount it out of hand. Shiro loves him and he's proved it enough times for Keith to have some faith in reserve.

After that, there’s really only one option.

It's night. Shiro is passed out beside him, arm heavy over Keith’s waist. His phone is plugged into the charger, lying on the moving box that’s passing for a nightstand, because they haven’t even drywalled the living room yet and solid wood furniture seems like an untenable luxury.

 _Don’t do it,_  he tells himself, and unlocks Shiro's phone.

The most recent messages are already up on the screen. There are two. The first is from Shiro at eight, right after he got home:

_Do you have it yet?_

The reply is from a number saved as... Hunk.

It’s cold water down his spine. There’s no way Shiro has slept with anyone else, but there’s a limited number of ways to interpret that and none of them are good. Beside him, Shiro huffs at the lack of warmth and flops an arm in his direction, just until he’s touching Keith's hip.

Keith feels his face go red. There’s no way.

_Yep. I’ve got the goods. See you there._

He scrolls up but there's nothing more revealing—meeting times that match up with Shiro’s late days in places that stick out from a dozen bad stings.

 _The goods._ His stomach goes hollow and his mind spins on possibilities. Shiro is perfect, but they've arrested perfect for worse. It happens every day.

Beside him, Shiro snorts and mumbles in his sleep, inching closer.

It doesn't matter. Whatever it is, they can work it out. Keith memorizes the number, shuts off the phone, and sidles into Shiro’s heat.

In the morning, he pulls Shiro into his arms before the alarm goes off and spends lazy minutes running his fingers up and down Shiro’s back, until they’re both awake and Shiro is compliant. There's no deeper agenda; for the first time in weeks he feels secure. He can fix this. 

"You can sleep in. I'll make coffee," Keith says, and Shiro mumbles an _okay_ into his arm.

Keith goes downstairs, starts the pot, and then steps in the garage to slap the tracking beacon he palmed from the station under the backseat, guilt settling over him in tandem with a cool, righteous assurance that it's the only option.

It's worth it to protect Shiro. At least, that's what he tells himself. 

After work he walks home, changes into something that might qualify as stealthy but is probably closer to what Lance would call goth— _“Black doesn’t automatically make it goth.” “Those boots do though.”_ —and heads out. He grabs his knife on the way out the door, just in case.

The red handkerchief is self-indulgent, but he ties it on anyway.

 

* * *

 

It’s a long walk, and once he gets there it takes him an hour to find Shiro’s car, even with the tracker blinking at him. The black sedan is parked behind a trailer along the side of an unmarked warehouse on the industrial side of town.

 _Classic,_ Keith thinks, as he edges along the wall of the warehouse.

He hears the pair before he sees them. 

The first voice is too sweet, too nice. "I know where you live," the man says. "I could always come by and—"

The second voice, Keith knows like a favorite song.

"No! No that's not necessary," Shiro replies, panicked. "I'd rather we keep it between us.”

Keith resettles the knife in his hand, testing the hilt. If anyone comes to their house, he’ll deal with them.

"Trying to keep it a secret from the boss?” the other voice laughs. “Got it. Get the rest of the specs by the end of the week and I’ll get it sorted out."

The boss. The rest of the specs for what? That's—that's not good. Organized crime is a different beast and he didn't come prepared for that. But whoever it is, they're alone, and Keith can take anyone one-on-one. There’s a cool confidence flowing through him—he was born for this moment, and there’s no way this is coming between them. There’s no way he’s losing Shiro to this.

He slips closer, keeping to the shadows until he can get a solid look at the scene. Shiro is standing next to the back of the truck. It’s hard to tell from the awkward angle, but there’s a stack of boxes or something in the back of it, covered in cloth.

The man is huge. Suddenly the _Hunk_ moniker makes sense and the small part of him that was still in doubt about Shiro's faithfulness slips away. Hunk’s hair is tied back with a—Keith does a double take—a headband and he's boyishly handsome, but there's nothing hungry about the way he's looking at Shiro.

Keith starts running through a mental list of every group the man could possibly be with—any group that thinks headbands are acceptable night wear for their enforcers—but comes up empty.

"Thanks, really—this means a lot," Shiro is saying.

"Yeah. Pleasure’s all mine." The man reaches out to take Shiro’s hand.

Keith sees red.

That’s his moment. He lunges out, pushing between them, making sure Shiro is fully behind him. The guy is too shocked to react, and Keith uses the distraction to back Shiro up toward the trailer, keeping him close with a hand on his wrist.

"Don’t you dare touch him," Keith hisses.

The man’s eyebrows go down and up along with his hands. He takes a step back. "What? I—what now?"

"Keith?" Shiro asks.

Keith glances back at Shiro, keeping the knife trained on the big guy. “You ok?”

“Keith—“ Shiro pulls his hand out of Keith’s grip, moving around so he can look Keith in the eye, but now he’s back in _danger—_

"Whatever this is, we can work it out, ok? This doesn't matter to me— Let’s get out of here, and we can talk," Keith pleads.

He’s met with dead silence.

They're both staring at him like he’s lost his mind, which doesn’t make sense. This is the part where Shiro breaks down and falls into his arms. This is the part where he gathers Shiro up and carries him out of here and they rebuild their life together, away from whatever this is. A house by the sea in some foreign country where none of this can touch them, until one day it catches up with them and Keith has to—

Shiro sighs and closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is my fault. I can't believe I let you watch _John Wick_  four times in one weekend."

"Oh, I love that movie," the big guy says. "The part in the subway?" He makes a little okay sign with his fingers and purses his lips.

He’s... he’s not wrong. It's definitely the best part, maybe the best scene in the entire series. Keith lowers the knife, looking between the man and Shiro.

"This is my fault," Shiro repeats, but to himself. He turns back toward the trailer and leans in, pulling the cloth off the suspicious stack of boxes.

No. Not boxes, but the most beautiful bike Keith's ever seen. Slick black, built for power and speed. Keith takes a stuttering step toward it. "What—?"

Shiro hums. "It's for you."

There's no way. There's _no way_. He turns back to Shiro, but even though his mouth is open, he can't make words come out of it.

"Hey, I think he likes it," the guy mock whispers at Shiro, whose face is stuck between severe annoyance and fondness. Hopefully mostly fondness. Keith is feeling very fond and it would be nice if Shiro were too.

"Happy anniversary?" Shiro offers.

Everything clicks into place. He's made a terrible, terrible mistake.

"Oh my god," Keith says faintly. "I'm so sorry. I thought—"

They're both looking at him with patient confusion, and the big guy might be genuine, but that's Shiro's, _yes, please, I can't wait to hear this_ look. Keith has no excuse, and his only chance to salvage this is two years of loving marriage and the time he didn't laugh at Shiro for needing to be carried to bed after he decided he wanted to watch _The Blair Witch Project_ on the Friday before Halloween.

"You kept coming home late,” Keith starts, but then realizes how needy it sounds and backtracks. "Which is fine," he clarifies, blushing, "but then I saw the message on your phone and I thought maybe you were having problems? Like... Money problems? Or..." Keith looks away toward the bike and then to the stars. It's a lovely, clear night. "...Drugs?"

Shiro gives him a dead stare.

“Or something else?”

Literally every word is a mistake, he realizes, the moment they leave his mouth. Shiro is still giving him a flat look and the big guy's eyebrows are up around his head band.

"So, just to be clear—" Shiro pinches the bridge of his nose again, "—you thought I had a secret gambling habit or that I was—what, buying drugs? And your first reaction was to grab a knife and stalk me down here at night? Is that it? Do I have it all?"

It’s not... inaccurate.

The guy raises his hand and steps forward. "Look, I know this isn't my place, but why the handkerchief mask thing? I'm just curious."

It was the mystique, of course, but he'd rather slit the sleeves off his jacket and shave his hair than admit that. “It was—“

"Because he thought it looked cool," Shiro finishes for him, eyes still closed, in an utter betrayal of every vow they made.

"No! It was..." he flounders for a word with impact, " _functional_."

"How?" Shiro asks flatly. "And Keith, babe, a knife? Really? What if he had a gun? What made you think he wouldn't have a gun? You could have gotten shot—no, I'm sorry, you could have gotten _stabbed_. With your own knife." He pushes a hand through his hair before he stills, eyes going wide. "Wait, did you walk down here? At night? Alone? Jesus christ Keith, I—" He cuts himself off and shakes his head.

Beside them, the man makes a little, concerned sound. "Yeah dude. It's not safe here at night."

That's unfair. Keith is the scariest thing for several blocks. He's about to prove it, but he stops himself before he can admit to a total stranger that he has a badge. Maybe it's a saving grace he left it at home anyway, in case there was a hostage situation or a shake-down or— 

Maybe he has been watching too many movies.

They all mull it over for a minute in the cool night air, the three of them, mutually avoiding eye contact, before Shiro sighs and gestures to the man.

"Keith, this is Hunk. He’s a mechanic. Hunk, this is Keith, my—trophy husband."

It’s a low blow.

"I'm _not_ a trophy,” Keith counters. “I make more money than you." He snorts. "I mean, look at you. If anything, you're the..."

He trails off, because they're both staring at him like he's a very small animal that's just done something remarkably close to human.

Hunk clicks his tongue. "He's cute."

"That's why I keep him around. Shiro doesn't break eye contact with Keith.

"I'm right here,” Keith says, gesturing to his body. “ _Right_ here.” But his embarrassment is already complete, thorough—irrevocable. Well-earned, even. There won’t be any living this down. All he can do is contain the damage.

He pockets the knife and offers a hand to Hunk. “Really, I’m so sorry. I just. I misunderstood.”

Hunk is grinning. “Oh, it’s fine. This was enlightening.”

Great.

Shiro covers the bike back up, despite Keith’s longing gaze, and they say their goodbyes. It’s late and this is the dumbest day of Keith's life somehow, and totally of his own making.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

Best to get it all out at once. “I... put a tracker on the car.”

“Oh my god,” Shiro mutters.

Keith stops under a streetlight and turns to him. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” That's not enough, he already knows. It's a monumental breach of trust. “If you need some time, I understand.”

There's no couch downstairs yet, but he can sleep on the floor, at least.

Shiro is staring at him blankly. “Some time...?” Shiro frowns. "Time for what? Keith—we're doing good. It doesn't have to be perfect all the time." He brushes the hair out of Keith's eyes and tilts his head up. "We're doing good."

Keith's still not used to it, but there's no lie in his eyes. They are doing good.

"So... what did you get me?" Shiro nudges him as they walk the rest of the way to the car, playful.

Keith doesn't look at him, embarrassed somehow. A bike. Shiro got him a _bike_  and he got Shiro plane tickets. "A trip," he mumbles.

Shiro pauses, grabbing his elbow with a light touch. "You got me a trip? Where to? You're coming, right?" He ducks and tilts his head, trying to catch Keith's eye.

Keith still can't meet his gaze. "Yeah. To Japan. I asked everyone at the office; they said they can cover for you for a week."

Shiro inhales, a soft, surprised sound. "You got me a trip to see my family?" Keith nods. "And you're coming, too?" Keith nods again. Shiro swallows. "Keith. Keith, look at me."

He does, finally, and Shiro pulls him into a one armed hug that's just a shade off crushing. "Thank you." He rocks Keith back and forth a moment and Keith can feel Shiro's breath in his hair. His own nerves settle and he feels like he can breathe again, too.

They walk the rest of the way arm in arm and they're almost back to the car before something horrible occurrs to Keith.

"Wait—can you not tell Lance about this? If he finds out, I'll never live it down."

Shiro doesn't answer him immediately, and when he does, he's almost sheepish. "Hunk is his roommate. I’m so sorry."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meet-cute and the fall.
>
>> The morning Shiro meets the love of his life is the same morning he almost dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the one shots in this extremely specific and weird AU were written out of order. This is the thrilling prequel to the previous tire fire of a chapter, and it's a little more serious but only barely. Please enjoy. 
> 
> @ dreamworks gimme money to write this romantic comedy.

The morning Shiro meets the love of his life is the same morning he almost dies.

It starts because his alarm doesn't go off, because his phone is dead, because he forgets to plug it in. And _because_ his alarm doesn't go off, he ends up ten minutes late to work before he even steps out the door of his apartment.

He's two blocks into his walk, tapping out a message on his phone and dreaming about the coffee he didn’t have when he steps off the curb without thinking.

Three things happen very fast: he hears a horn blare from feet away, has one glimpse of truck headlights, and then he's in the air—

Because someone is carrying him. There are arms under him, he realizes through the rush of adrenaline and panic, arms gripping him around the waist and under his knees, so tight it hurts.

“What the fuck were you doing?” he hears the man say before he sees his face. There's too much happening to focus on any one part—someone's yelling, there are car doors slamming and voices gathering around them. Of course, this had to happen during the morning commute in the busiest part of town.

“I…” Shiro glances around, trying to comprehend the fact that he’s not dead in the street—that he's just been saved from a sudden and gruesome death because someone _picked him up_.

And then he looks up.

The man is young and his black hair is tied back from his face. He’s—beautiful. “I…” Shiro hears himself repeat dumbly, trying to form words that won't embarrass him for rest of his days.

A little, concerned frown creases the man's eyes. “Are you okay?”

“You’re really strong,” Shiro says, and there's the lifetime of embarrassment he was dreading.

The man blushes and mutters, “Sorry,” setting Shiro back on his own two feet with a steadying hand, and suddenly Shiro is taller than him. He's so small and they’re so close he has to look up to meet Shiro’s eyes, and the way the morning sun hits them, Shiro can’t tell what color they are beyond stunning.

 _Oh no_ , is the only thought that has time to register before the truck driver is running up to them.

“Oh my god, oh my god—are you ok?” The driver is a middle-aged man who looks like he's had less coffee than Shiro and a closer brush with death.

“No, I'm sorry,” Shiro apologizes, “I wasn't watching where I was going—”

“Don't apologize to him.” The man—no, the kid? The kid who saved his life steps between them, looking like he’s ready to fight the driver for all he’s worth. “He almost killed you!”

It’s a shitshow, because the second the driver turns to the kid, his eyes go wide— _wider_ and he makes a sound that’s somewhere between a scream and a gasp. “You're bleeding!”

Shiro looks where he's pointing, and yeah—that's blood. There's a tear in the arm of the kid’s jacket, where the truck's mirror must have hooked him, all the way down to the skin. It’s gruesome, but the kid glances down at it and frowns like he’s confused as to why it’s being brought up.

“It’s nothing,” he scoffs.

At least the jacket is red, Shiro thinks and deep down lets go of the last shred of hope he had of making it to work on time.

In the end, they let the driver go, and Shiro convinces the kid that bleeding in the street isn’t an acceptable pastime—though he loses the battle on taking him to the emergency room. Instead, they end up back in Shiro’s apartment with Shiro trying to convince him to stay still long enough that he can disinfect the wound and at least get a bandage on it.

“It really doesn’t hurt.”

Shiro sighs. “I don’t believe you. _Hold still._ ”

The kid—Keith, he said his name was—rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t flinch. It’s like he’s made of steel.

“This is going to bruise. You really should go to the—”

“Emergency room. I know. I’ll be fine.”

“How old are you anyway?” It occurs to Shiro to ask, belatedly.

There’s a moment where he thinks Keith won’t answer and dread slides down his spine because _oh my god, where are his parents_ —

“Twenty-five,” Keith says. That’s a shock. He doesn’t look a day over twenty, if that. Most of his hair has fallen out of its ponytail and it makes him look younger than he looked with it up. Now that Shiro has time to breathe and take him in, he looks like a kid who snuck out between classes to smoke behind the school. Combat boots and a simple black tank, tight jeans— _very_ tight jeans.

Shiro finishes wrapping it in silence. “Too tight?” he asks when he’s done and almost stutters over the word.

Keith flexes his arm and rolls his shoulder and Shiro is forcibly reminded that they met because Keith picked him up like he was a sack of feathers and swept him out of danger. “Yeah,” Keith smiles at him. “It’s great, thanks.”

That grin is lethal and Shiro absolutely needs to get away from him before he forgets he’s not in high school and starts blushing.

“I’m late to work or I’d offer you coffee,” Shiro apologizes, distracting himself by mentally calculating how many looks he’s going to get for coming in two hours late. He’s the boss, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference when it comes to minor mutinies. Lance and Allura are going to use this as an excuse to take an hour-long coffee break for the next week—

“Uh…” The kid glances up at him, and god his eyes are something else. “I could give you a ride if you want? Maybe you won’t almost die again.”

Shiro waffles for a moment but then nods. He’s only human.

 

* * *

 

 

To be fair, when Keith said _ride_ he didn’t specify it would be on a motorcycle. He also didn’t mention he only had one helmet, which he hands to Shiro like he’ll know what to do with it.

“You know what? It’s fine, I’ll walk—”

Keith quirks an eyebrow at him and gets on the bike. “Just hold and you’ll be fine.”

“Hold on to _what?_ ”

Keith raises his arm and nods over his shoulder in a motion that takes a moment to interpret but Shiro realizes with a blush means _me_.

 _You’re pathetic_ , he tells himself, and climbs on.

 

* * *

 

“There’s a cop behind us,” Shiro yells through the helmet, five minutes in.

Keith doesn’t respond immediately, but glances in his mirror.

“...You’re not wearing a helmet,” Shiro adds, which he’s pretty sure is illegal or at least lethally inadvisable and he’s already had one brush with death this morning.

“It’s fine,” Keith yells back. His mantra, Shiro is realizing. _Just a flesh wound. Just a two hundred and fifty dollar ticket._

At the next light, the police car pulls up next to them. The cop inside looks like he’s never smiled in his life and has instead been studying for years the careful art of carving his facial hair to make it as intimidating as possible. He’s terrifying and Shiro feels himself go tense because oh god, they’re actually going to get pulled over and now he’s not going to make it to work before lunch at least.

In defiance of man and god and all logic, Keith glances over at the cop, revs the bike, and takes off like a bullet the moment the light turns green, zipping between cars so fast the cop doesn’t even have time to put on his lights.

Two lights later, the cop catches up to him, but all he does is glare at them as they go by and shake his head like he’s personally disappointed.

It’s quickly adding up to be the weirdest morning of Shiro's life.

Keith stops in front of his office and Shiro climbs off, legs feeling like jelly. The adrenaline rush is going to haunt him for the rest of the day— _Keith_ is going to haunt him, so he hands back the helmet and throws caution to the wind.

He opens his mouth to ask if Keith wants to get coffee or lunch or anything, anywhere, anytime, but Keith beats him to it.

“I get coffee near your place in the mornings,” he says, not meeting Shiro’s eyes. “I could give you a ride, after, if you want.”

Shiro feels his mouth fall open.

“I have another helmet at home…” Keith adds, sweetening the deal, red dusting his cheeks.

They exchange numbers, say goodbye, and that’s it.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Keith texts him before he gets to Shiro’s apartment, and when he shows up it’s with a bag of something that smells like cinnamon and butter in one hand and a holder with two cups of coffee in the other. That’s when Shiro knows he’s done for.

Having a ride gives him a few extra minutes in the morning—they spend them sharing coffee in the park across from his office. Keith is good at companionable silence and for all that he looks like something out of an eighties movie about the dangers of unsupervised adolescents, he’s as sweet as the day is long. It becomes the best part of Shiro's day.

When he starts to feel overwhelmingly guilty about the amount of gas money and coffee money and pastry money he isn’t contributing, he offers to take Keith to lunch. That becomes routine, too.

Before he knows it, they’re spending two hours a day together. They talk about everything that isn’t personal, because the first time Shiro asks him about himself he clams up stays at the edge of his seat for the rest of the morning. It’s fair, Shiro thinks. Keith never brings up Shiro’s arm or the scar or his hair—he doesn’t stare, doesn’t seem to notice.

And he brings Shiro cinnamon sugar crusted puff pastries. Nothing else really matters.

 

* * *

 

“Are you… seeing someone?” Allura asks one morning as she walks by his office with a stack of papers.

Shiro feels himself go red immediately which is a self-betrayal of the highest order. The scar over his nose makes it worse, he knows—the contrast is obvious.

“No. Why?” He’s not. Not—not like that.

She shrugs. “Just wondering. You seem relaxed. And I haven’t seen you take a real lunch break in years.”

With that, she walks away, not sticking around to hear him make excuses. That evening, after Keith drops him in front of his apartment—because Keith has started picking him up from work, also—her words come back to him.

Keith kicks the bike back into gear, reaching to pop his helmet back on, but Shiro stops him.

“Wait. Do you want to come up?”

Keith’s eyes go wide.

“For dinner, I mean,” Shiro rushes to correct. "I was going to order in."

He glances down at the helmet in his hands, and Shiro gears himself up for rejection, but then he smiles to himself.

“Sure,” he says softly.

 

* * *

 

It’s Friday that first night, and evidently, neither of them have anywhere better to be. After dinner they end up on Shiro’s couch, watching an objectively terrible action movie that has Keith riveted and it’s by far the best evening he’s had in ages.

When Keith texts him on Saturday and shows up at his door with take-out as payback, Shiro doesn’t question it. When Keith falls asleep on his shoulder after the end of the movie, he fights with himself for an hour before he wakes him up and sends him home. It turns out, he does it habitually. Shiro wonders if he's getting enough sleep. He finds himself waiting a little longer each time to wake him up.

It should give him pause, but they fall together too easily, and he’s tired of having to be the voice of reservation and reason in his life. Maybe, sometimes, good things happen for no reason at all.

A month in, as he’s seeing Keith out the door, Keith turns back to him and pauses. His look is loaded; somehow it’s no surprise it all when he leans forward and up and presses a kiss to Shiro’s mouth. It should be forward, it should feel like it changes something, but Shiro presses into it and feels relieved.

When he pulls away, it’s a toss-up for which of them is redder.

“You can stay, if you want,” Shiro offers, because Keith can’t be the only brave one between them and there’s not a shred of doubt left in him.

It’s worth it; Keith’s smile is almost blinding.

 

* * *

 

Two days later finds him watching Keith eat breakfast across from him, drowning in one of Shiro’s oversize t-shirts, hair sleep-mussed—both of them sore and happy, and he was right, he thinks.

Sometimes good things do happen, for no reason at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The breakup and the make-up.
>
>> "He’s obviously—“ Lance waves a hand in Keith’s general direction, gesturing to his entire being, “—some kind of delinquent teen or something.”
>> 
>> Keith eyes narrow on him. “I’m _twenty-five—_ “
>> 
>> “Yeah, right,” Lance snorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to request if there's anything else you want to see for this AU. It's been really fun to write!

Two months in, this is what Shiro knows: Keith is quiet, thoughtful, witty, and the person he wants to wake up next to for the rest of his life.

And that’s it. Keith won't get within a five block radius of a personal discussion.

Shiro loves him without reservation and he knows Keith reciprocates because he pours himself into every other corner of their relationship; if Keith doesn’t want to talk about something, Shiro is too dumb in love to force it.

When Shiro asks how his day was, Keith smiles and says some variation on a theme of _fine._ When Shiro presses it, Keith won’t meet his eyes and makes an excuse to leave early every time. It’s not worth it.

Instead, he starts keeping a tally of all Keith’s little oddities like he’ll be able to make it add up to something obvious if he watches close enough. If Shiro offers to pick him up from his apartment, Keith shakes his head and says it’ll be easier for him to drive himself. If Shiro offers to buy dinner two nights in a row, Keith gives him a confused look and pays without batting an eye—plus a twenty percent tip. His clothes are always clean, and sometimes when he picks Shiro up for lunch, his hair is wet and he smells like soap.

The only point of suspicion—aside from the fact that Keith _won’t talk about anything_ is the tattoo on his back. Shiro imagines if there was a way to hide it, Keith would have, but it's too big: two panthers fighting, one perched on his shoulder and the other on its hind legs, tail curving around his hip. The first time Shiro sees him with his shirt off is the first time he feels out of his depth, but then Keith blushes and smiles and there’s nothing about it that’s unappealing. There’s nothing about _Keith_ that’s unappealing.

He lets it all slide.

The first time Keith shows up with a black eye, Shiro lets that slide, too—tells himself it’s not his business and tries to ignore it. The second time is harder, and it only gets worse from there. Shiro watches him strip before bed and feels his stomach flip every time there's a new bruise on him. In his mind, he starts to draw lines in the sand where he’ll finally make Keith talk sit down and talk about it.

But in the end, he doesn’t. Not until it's too late.

 

* * *

 

On their two month anniversary, Keith surprises him by coming up to the office with lunch. Keith walks in in his usual get up and Shiro realizes the moment he steps in the door that it’s going to be a train wreck.

The problem with working in the same office you started out of college is that everyone there feels like they own a part of you. Everyone thinks they’re his friend, and they are, but they forget Shiro doesn’t need their protection or even their opinion—on this, in particular.

Months of dating have inoculated Shiro against Keith’s intrinsic everything. It all comes rushing back in seconds. The sunglasses pushed up over his long hair, the cropped jacket and tight pants and _boots_ —

“Oh my god,” Lance stage-whispers. Even Allura is staring. Even Coran.  

Keith shoots him a confused glance and bee-lines for Shiro’s open office like he hasn’t got half the room craning their necks after him. Shiro gets one glimpse of a mass of shocked faces over Keith’s shoulder before Keith closes the door. He sets down the takeout and leans over the desk for a kiss that has Shiro melting.

He forgets what's waiting for them outside while they're eating. Shiro would like to introduce Keith to everyone, but he'd like a nice, quiet lunch with Keith even more. When they're done, Keith pecks him on the cheek, double checks what time he should pick Shiro up, and leaves him with leftovers and an office full of busybodies.

It doesn’t matter what they think, Shiro tells himself—but that's a fatal mistake. He manages to avoid everyone for the rest of the day and escapes with nothing worse than a side-eye and a few knowing grins.

The second time Keith comes to the office, it goes worse.

It takes Shiro a moment to pick out what’s different about Keith when he walks in, and when he does, he has to do a double take. Keith’s pants look like they’re painted on. His legs don’t need the help. It’s overkill, as is the t-shirt, which is unremarkable except for the way it rides up over his hip—

There’s been talk around the office in the interim, evidently. Shiro doesn’t miss the look Katie and Allura share, or the way Lance is staring daggers.

Keith walks by him without a glance, but his words are loud enough for the entire office to hear. “It’s rude to stare,” Keith deadpans.

Shiro feels his jaw drop.

“Excuse me?” Lance asks, standing up.

“I said, it’s rude to stare,” Keith repeats, turning back to him.

“I’m not staring. You’re dressed like a…” He must see the glare Shiro is boring into him over Keith’s shoulder. There are limits and this is Shiro’s only lunch hour—he wants to spend it enjoying the company, and the view.

“Lance, enough.” 

Lance raises his hands to Keith as it to say, _look at this._ Shiro has, at length. “He looks like a succubus!”

Keith's mouth gapes for a second before his eyes narrow. “Succubi are girls.”

It’s Lance’s turn to gape. “How do you _know_ that?”

“Because I know how to read?” Keith is looking at Lance like he’s a bug. It's almost fascinating. The Keith Shiro knows is painfully sweet, but he’s starting to get the sense that it’s an insular thing. He can be a bit antisocial at times, to put it in delicate terms.

“Read what?” Lance is asking. “A manual on how to suck a guy’s money out of his—”

“ _Lance_.”

Or maybe Lance just gets under Keith’s skin, the same way he gets under Shiro’s.

 

* * *

 

Shiro makes it up to him that evening with a nice dinner and a nicer shower, and then fucks him slow and sweet, taking time to memorize the lines of ink on his back and the way his rhythm stutters when he’s about to go over the edge. He doesn’t bring up what happened at the office, but Keith does.

“Does he have a thing for you?” Keith asks.

Shiro laughs. “Lance? No, he has a crush on Allura. I think it’s like a... territorial thing.”

Keith snorts into the sheets, and then asks, “Should I stop coming to your office?”

Seeing Keith is the best part of his day. “No, he was out of line. I talked to him.”

Keith is quiet for a moment. He hasn’t moved from where Shiro laid him down. “You know I don’t want your money, right?”

“What?” Shiro play-gasps. “You’re not going to let me buy your love? Keith, I thought we had an arrangement—”

Keith punches him in the stomach.

 

* * *

 

He gets used to Keith stopping by to drop off little offerings. If he was in love before that, what he feels when he looks up and see Keith’s standing at the door of his office with a bag of something warm and sweet is something else entirely. His biggest fear is that he’ll accidentally ask Keith to marry him—his second biggest is that Keith would say no.

 _You don’t know anything about him_ , logic whispers, and it doesn’t matter.

Two weeks later, Keith shows up to the office looking like he just rolled out of the last act of an action flick. Shiro stifles a sound of surprise because he saw Keith that morning, kissed the cheek that's now sporting a bloody bruise. It’s all fresh—another bruise that's still red over his jaw and butterfly stitches over his brow, and he’s standing there with his jacket around his waist and a paper bag in hand like it’s any other day.

For reasons that escape Shiro for days afterward, it's one swift slide into a waking nightmare. The wounds are enough on their own, but by accident or cunning purpose, his tank top is one of Shiro’s and about three sizes too big. The strap is loose over his shoulder, hanging enough to expose the top edge of his tattoo—the black panther’s open jaws are gaping over his tanned shoulder blade.

He’s beautiful, despite the bruises, but like this, he looks lethal. Or like he won a fight with something worse.

Lance watches him walk by with a glare that’s almost comical; Keith doesn’t spare him a glance.

“No, nope. That’s far enough,” Lance says before Keith reaches Shiro’s office.

Shiro would roll his eyes if he weren’t panicked about Keith’s—everything. Instead, he sends Lance a sour look. “Really?”

“Yes! We’re worried about you.” Lance nods at Allura and Pidge and Coran where he’s standing by the printer. Pidge shakes her head and waves her hands. Allura pretends to be very interested in the file she just opened. "He’s obviously—“ Lance waves a hand in Keith’s general direction, gesturing to his entire being, “—some kind of delinquent teen or something.”

Keith eyes narrow on him. “I’m _twenty-five_ —“

“Yeah, right,” Lance snorts.

“—and I’m not a delinquent.”

“Then explain why I saw you coming out of the police station yesterday.”

Keith’s mouth falls open. “You—did you follow me?”

Lance snorts, but looks like he's starting to regret bringing it up. "No. I was walking by and I saw you—”

That’s several steps too far. “Enough.” Shiro turns to Keith, placating, because there’s not a shred of doubt in him, and it doesn’t matter what Keith does in his spare time.

Keith isn’t looking at him. He’s furious. Shiro has never seen him angry, let alone livid.

“I work there,” Keith says.

Lance scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

Keith stares at him for a moment before he reaches into his pocket, fishing around for a moment before he pulls out his wallet and flips it open—and it's a badge. He has a fucking badge.

Lance grabs it out of his hand, turning it over. “You’re a _cop?_ Are you serious?” He sounds more impressed than anything. Shiro can relate. A cop. He tries to imagine Keith in a uniform and can't decide if the image is ridiculous or cute or something else.

Keith takes back the badge. He’s looking straight ahead, at no one, like he can’t meet their eyes. The office is dead silent around them. “I’m—“ he glances down at the bag in his hands and then shoves it into Shiro’s hand without looking at him. “Those are for you. I’ve gotta go.”

He turns to the door without glancing at Shiro, who realizes a minute too late that he should be moving. “Keith, wait—“

He doesn’t pause. The door clicks shut behind him, but Shiro can't let him walk away. He also can't leave the office like this, but when he turns Allura waves at him and the door. "Oh, go after him."

He takes the stairs instead of the elevator, but by the time he gets to ground floor there’s no sign of Keith anywhere. A quick scan of the street doesn’t produce a red jacket or a familiar head of black hair. He paces up the sidewalk, directionless. His phone is still upstairs, but maybe there’s time to go grab it and he can call and apologize—

There, finally. He rounds the corner and there he is, on a bench at the edge of the park—the one they share in the mornings.

Shiro walks over and sits next to him. He picks up Keith's hand where he has it fisted on his knee.

“Keith, I'm so sorry.” Keith won't look at him, so he tries a different tactic. He reaches out to brush the hair out of Keith’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

That’s the biggest point of confusion. This is his big secret. It’s the least problematic thing Keith could do for a living. Shiro was geared up for worse— _much_ worse. Street racer, underground fighting ring, stunt man—

“Because he’s right,” Keith says. The way his head is hanging with his hair loose around his beat-up face makes him look like a kicked dog. Shiro can’t find his feet in the face of it. “I—I’m nothing. I don’t have anything. I live in a shitty apartment on the other side of town. I can't dress right. I'm not good at—at any of this.”

Shiro feels his chest go tight. None of it matters.

“That's not true. You're perfect.”

“No. I'm not,” Keith says dully. “You deserve someone better.” Keith takes a deep breath, brushing a hand through his hair. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

Cold burns through Shiro's gut. “Keith...”

 _If you don’t fix this now, you’ll regret it forever._  He knows it, but he’s still trying to organize his thoughts when Keith pulls his hand away and stands.

“I’ve gotta go. I’m sorry.” He pauses before he walks away, staring at the ground like he can’t bring himself to meet Shiro’s eyes. “I just. I need some time, please.”

_I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you._

It’s implicit, and Shiro reads it loud and clear. There’s a finality to it he doesn’t want to focus on; it hollows him out anyway.

 

* * *

 

He trudges back into the office an hour later, the bag of cold pastries still in his hand. His appetite is long gone.

No one says a word to him when he walks in. The office is suspiciously quiet, anyway, but that’s fine. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. 

“Is everything ok?” Lance asks timidly when he walks by Shiro's office a few minutes later

Shiro doesn’t answer him, doesn’t look at him.

“Shiro—”

“He needs some time,” Shiro says flatly. It’s painful to say, the reality of it crashing down on him for the first time. He's not stupid, and he's not given to wishful thinking. It means Keith broke up with him.

The only saving grace is that it’s Friday, and he’s his own boss; he can leave any time he wants.

“I’m taking off. Good work this week. I’ll see you all on Monday,” he announces on his way out the door. He means it to come out encouraging, but his voice won’t inflect the way he wants it to.

Keith isn’t waiting for him downstairs. There's no bike in sight. Shiro lets go of the last shred of hope he had and walks the mile home.

He spends the evening stretched out on the couch with a bottle of something disgusting, chewing his way through the morose bag of soggy pastries Keith left him with. He puts on a bad cop movie that Keith would love and tries hard to not think about Keith’s weight in his arms, or Keith’s hair tickling his chin.

It’s pathetic. He checks his phone so many times it goes dead around midnight, but there’s nothing from the only person he wants to talk to. Four texts from Lance, apologizing, and one from Allura, telling him to take it easy. A missed call from Matt.

He doesn't bother plugging it in.

Saturday is a descent. By Sunday he’s full-on stewing in his own misery, playing a game of chicken with himself to see how pathetic he can get. The crowning moment is when he finds Keith’s gloves in the bathroom.

Two in the afternoon finds him in the same boxers and tank top he’s been in for two days, unshaven and midway through his fourth re-watch of _Operation Condor_ , trying to pick out the parts Keith would have laughed at. He's slid so far down the couch he might as well be lying down. Every few minutes he shoves another handful of pity popcorn in his mouth. The fingerless gloves are sitting on the table in front of him, a makeshift shrine to his former joy.

He's working himself up to another beer and trying to decide if it's worth it to get dressed to go to the store on the corner for more when the doorbell rings.

He gets up to answer only because misery loves company and he's surrounded by a miasma of it—it's sure to spread on sight. He doesn’t check who it is before he opens the door, ready to accept any hit to his dignity—

But of course, it’s Keith.

He’s wearing his same old black pants and tank top, hair tied back, jacket tied around his waist. A pink box is tucked under his arm. He gives Shiro a once over and then does a double take, eyebrows going up. “I tried to call first, sorry.”

His bruises look better, but there are shadows under Keith's eyes that Shiro recognizes from the mirror. He kicks his heart down before it can start racing for hope.

“Can I come in...?” Keith asks after a long moment.

Shiro steps back, remembering at the last second that his apartment is a massacre, but too late. Keith pauses at the doorway, surveying the amassed takeout bags and the half-empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table. On the TV, _Operation Condor_ mocks him with an explosion.

Keith shakes his head and turns back to Shiro. “These are from Lance,” he says, setting the box on the only corner of the dining table that’s not covered in takeout boxes. “Donuts. Good ones, too.” He pauses, looking Shiro over again, gaze settling absently on the middle of his chest like it does when he’s thinking hard. “He apologized. And he said—“ Keith takes a deep breath and meets his eyes, finally. “I want to make this work.”

“Lance wants to make this work?”

Keith rolls his eyes and moves a step closer. “Yeah. Lance and I, we’re in love. Who knew.” He pulls Shiro down into a chaste kiss. “I’m sorry,” he says against his lips when they pull apart. “I just—“

Shiro pulls him into a one-armed bear hug. “No, it’s ok. It’s fine. I should have had your back.”

“I didn’t really give you a chance to,” Keith mumbles against his chest.

They stay that way for a moment, enjoying each other’s space, and then Keith draws in a breath and coughs. “Do you want to take a shower?”

It’s not a suggestion.

He laughs against Keith’s hair, high on the relief coursing through him. “Join me?”

 

* * *

 

“I'll ask a question, you ask a question. Fair?”

Keith nods. He’s sitting cross-legged on the counter in one of Shiro’s shirts while Shiro makes something real for them to eat, because he doesn’t care if he eats starch and sugar for a solid week, but Keith needs something decent.

“You can ask anything you want, okay?” Keith nods again and Shiro takes it as the all clear. “How long have you been an officer?” Shiro starts, because that’s simple, even if the thought is still bizarre.

Of course, Keith clams up, even at that. It’s a full-body thing with him—knees up to his chin, arms wrapped tight around his legs. “A few years,” he mumbles into his knees, and it’s still like pulling teeth, but at least he’s talking.

Shiro reaches out to ruffle his hair. “Cool. Your turn.”

“What’s your favorite animal?”

Shiro starts. “That’s really what you want to know? Not about the—” Shiro jerks his head at the scar around his bicep, because a missing arm seems like it’s more important than hearing Shiro sing a sonnet about cats, but Keith only nods.

The back and forth is slow and Shiro realizes ten minutes in that he needs to read between the lines of everything Keith tells him. When Shiro asks about his family, Keith says, _I was on my own for a while._ When Shiro asks how he became an officer, Keith looks away and says, _I helped with some stuff._ It takes a while, but Shiro pieces together everything he needs to get the gist: a rough childhood, a rougher adolescence that he came out on top of—and it doesn’t matter.

None of it matters. The only part that hurts is that Keith thinks it does.

“I can’t believe you’re a cop. Is that why you never get pulled over for reckless driving?” Shiro asks when they’ve both had enough of the twenty questions. He steps between Keith’s legs where he’s still perched on the counter; it puts Keith right at his height.

“No, that’s because Kolivan is a pushover,” Keith mutters, wrapping his arms around Shiro in a loose hug.

Shiro taps their foreheads together and stays right there, eyes closed, enjoying his heat. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

Keith hums his agreement.

“Do you want to live here?”

Keith jerks and pulls in a sharp breath, and Shiro knows he’s gone too far. He doesn’t respond right away, not moving, barely breathing, and then he asks, “You really want me here?”

“Every day.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The station tries to deal with Keith's post-breakup meltdown.
>
>> “—But _still_ ,” Thace says through gritted teeth, glaring at Kolivan, “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you for it.”
>> 
>> “He might for your driving, though,” Antok interjects, because someone has to. It’s objectively Keith’s greatest flaw aside from his ability to subsist solely on canned pasta, which presumably this Shiro has found ways to work around. 

“You’ve been a little—”

Keith looks up at Antok from where his head is lying flat on his desk, the exact same position he’s been in since he got back from lunch.

“—pathetic, today.”

Keith doesn’t respond, but he flops his head so he’s facing the other way. After a moment he mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like _I'm fine_ , which might be convincing if there wasn't newspaper print stamped on his cheek from where he was trying to meld with the desk.

“Trouble with the missus?” Antok tries again because usually that can get a rise out of him, but no dice. They haven't had an _I'm Fine_ day since he hooked up with the glasses-wearing menace. That's what Kolivan calls him—when Keith isn't within earshot, though technically no one’s seen him without a helmet on.

Technically no one else has seen him, period, but according to Kolivan he’s the size of a truck. It's not like Keith can't protect his own honor—it's a surprise, that’s all. In seven going on eight years, Keith's never fallen in with anyone. There have been plenty of suitors of every shape and size. The pool on who he'd end up with dried up years ago, and no one bet on a salaryman.

“How long had he been like that?” Thace asks behind his hand when he walks in.

“Since lunch.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Thace kneels next to him like a parent reasoning with a child—and the comparison isn't far off. Keith is the closest thing any of them have to a child and for all that he's in his mid-twenties and looks like he rolled out of the womb holding a knife, he's young.

He's young, but he never acts like it. He certainly doesn't throw post-lunch depression tantrums.

“Do you want to go on patrol?” Thace asks when Keith doesn't answer. “I had a call about a llama earlier. We can drive by and see if they caught it.”

Keith rolls his head on the desk in something approximating a shake. That’s insane—stray livestock calls are one of the few joys of the job.

It’s out of character enough that it gets Kolivan’s attention.

“Didn't you have lunch with the g—the guy today?” He asks from across the room. With visible pain, he adds, “Did it go well?”

Of course, he's the one Keith finally answers.

“...We broke up.”

A collective hush settles over the room. It's a code red. No one really wants to acknowledge it, but the Keith of the past three months is the happiest version of him they've ever known. Which isn’t to say he was unhappy before, but post-menace Keith takes lunches and days off and doesn’t act like going home is the worst part of his day.

The silence stretches. Antok nudges Thace, because this is his department; Thace kicks his foot and sends a desperate grin in Kolivan’s direction. Kolivan closes in eyes in a way that says universally, _let’s just call Ulaz in on his day off—_ none of which helps the current slow-motion societal collapse that’s occurring around Keith’s desk.

“Uh, it’s taco night, right?” Reg is new and spends most of his time writing parking tickets, but he’s caught on to the pecking order fast. “You know—Taco Friday?”

“Oh, yeah!” Thace thumps Keith on the shoulder. “Taco Friday. Wanna come?”

They’ve never had a taco anything in Antok’s twenty years on the force.

“Tacos?” Keith lifts his head off the desk, finally. “Since when do we do tacos?”

“New tradition,” Kolivan says without looking up from the paperwork he’s pretending to do, and that’s that.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t go well.

“He hates me,” Keith chokes out around a mouthful of cold beans. He’s been eating the same burrito for two hours like he’s playing a game of chicken with it to see who can be more pathetic. What they’ve been able to piece together is that the glasses-wearing menace’s name is Shiro, Keith is the breaker more than the break-ee, and it was over something monumentally stupid.

“I don’t think that’s true, Keith,” Thace says in that soft voice he reserves for Keith related issues.

Keith isn’t listening. “I live in a shit apartment and I look like—like a—” He cuts himself off with a sniff, taking another, more disgusting bite.

“You do live in a shit apartment,” Kolivan says, pointedly ignoring the second half of whatever he was going to say. “I’ve been telling you to move for years.” Commenting on Keith’s appearance is a losing battle; he tried it once and they _all_ regret it.

“—But _still_ ,” Thace says through gritted teeth, glaring at Kolivan, “I’m sure he doesn’t hate you for it.”

“He might for your driving, though,” Antok interjects, because someone has to. It’s objectively Keith’s greatest flaw aside from his ability to subsist solely on canned pasta, which presumably this Shiro has found ways to work around. Keith’s gained a modicum of weight since they started dating.  “Wait, has he even seen your apartment?”

“No.”

“You still eating canned ravioli?”

“ _No_. Shiro cooks—cooked.” Keith sniffs, and amends.

“Where’s Shiro’s apartment?” Reg asks because evidently it’s show-and-tell hour. No one’s complaining—they’ve been wondering all this for months.

Keith takes another bite. “On tenth.”

Dead silence.

“The _Lofts_? The Lofts on tenth?” Thace asks, sharing a look with Kolivan. The Lofts are expensive in the way a Lamborghini is expensive—it probably costs money to walk in the building at all. Keith only nods, like that’s perfectly normal.

“...Wait, where does Shiro work?”

Keith rolls his shoulder and waves at the wall in a vague gesture. “Downtown. The big one—the glass one.”

The demeanor of the table shifts and they all share a nervous glance. Shiro lives in the nicest apartment building in the city and works in the biggest building, and it hadn’t really occurred to them, but—

“Keith…” Kolivan closes his eyes for a moment, taking a breath, centering himself. They all know what he’s about to ask. “Has Shiro offered you any money?” He’s the only one brave enough to ask it.

Keith frowns. “What? No.”

They don’t sigh in relief, but it’s a near thing.

Kolivan’s frown deepens. “Does he give you—things?”

Keith shakes his head. “Just dinner.” He sniffs again, staring down at the flaccid remnants of his two-hours-cold burrito. Antok prays he won’t make them suffer through watching him try to eat any more of it. “He was good at cooking.”

His eyes go bright mid-way through the next bite, but they all pretend not to notice.

 

* * *

 

On Sunday, Keith rolls into the station looking like ten miles of bad road—which is saying something given he moonlights as a self-defense instructor and takes every bruise his students give him as a personal point of pride. Evidently, Saturday wasn’t kind to him.

“No word from the guy?” Antok makes himself ask.

Keith doesn’t look up. “I told him not to call.”

They leave him in the no man’s land of abject misery that occupies the six-foot radius around his desk. Sundays are slow; there’s nothing to distract him or them.

The why and how of the breakup are still shrouded in mystery and Antok’s beginning to think it’s going to stay that way in perpetuity when Zethrid peeks in the door.

“There’s some guy here looking for Keith, maybe,” she says. “Doesn’t look dangerous.”

 _Shiro_. Judging by Thace’s look of relief and the weird, horrified thing Kolivan’s mouth is doing, he’s not the only one thinking it.

They’re wrong.

The man is barely in the door when Keith sees him.

“ _You,_ ” Keith hisses. Not Shiro then. The man stops cold, which is unfortunate because he stops right in front of Antok’s desk, close enough that Antok can see him trembling. “How did you find me? Did you go to every precinct in the city asking if they had anyone on staff that looked like a delinquent?”

The man goes pale. “Kind of?”

A delinquent. Antok hears someone bite back a laugh because Keith really does look like something out of an afterschool special when he's out of uniform. He wouldn't be caught dead in it off duty, and now that he's made detective, he’s reverted totally to his pre-law-abiding appearance.

“Look.” The man steps toward Keith, holding the box in front of him like a shield, or maybe like an offering to an angry god. “I'm sorry I called you a delinquent—among other things. I was wrong.”

 _Among other things_. Keith doesn't twitch.

“...I think you should give Shiro another chance. He really loves you.” The man’s eyes go wide. “Has he told you that? Wait, shit, I—”

Keith closes his eyes. “He’s told me.”

“Ok. Ok,” the man says, stepping close enough to set the box on Keith’s desk with the same caginess of a zookeeper throwing meat to a something big and clawed. “I just wanted to say I was sorry. And I was a dick. I shouldn’t have made assumptions.” He trails off, eyebrows scrunching like he’s going over a mental list someone made him memorize but he forgot half of the minute after he was told it. “You don’t really look like a demon.”

Whatever was on the list, it probably wasn’t that.

Thace breaks first; Antok leans over and thumps his back to help him through his coughing fit. Of all the scenarios they’d speculated, this wasn’t one. Antok’s bet was on it being wheelie-related. Keith never got past the concept of _just because you can doesn’t mean you should_ where motorcycles were concerned.

At the sound, the man seems to realize he’s in a room full of people with nothing better to do than watch him embarrass himself; he makes a like a tree.

Keith doesn’t move for a solid ten minutes after he departs, and Antok is counting because he wants to wait the amount of time that’s requisite and polite before he steals some of whatever is in the box. It’s pink—definitely baked goods.

But ten minutes in Keith stands and shoves the box under his arm, grabbing his keys. “Can I have the rest of the day?” he ask Kolivan, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the first time in days.

Kolivan nods; everyone knows Keith doesn’t work weekends anyway.

 

* * *

 

“You know what the worst part of this is?” Thace asks on Monday after Keith calls in sick.

It’s the first time since he caught flu five years back and that time he only stayed home because Ulaz drove him there and hid his keys and spent the next twenty-four hours cajoling him into eating soup— which, as he tells it, mostly involved convincing Keith that spaghettios didn’t qualify as soup _or_ food.

In this case, it’s probably a good sign—even if Kolivan has been holed up in his office with the door closed since he got the call, wallowing in a morass of quasi-parental anguish. It’s hard to watch them grow up, Antok presumes.

“What’s the worst part?”

“It took Keith crying for us to get Taco Fridays.”


	5. interlude: kolivan sees the abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked: reg(ris): keith, why is there a white stain on your uniform
>
>> Thace is the first to move. He stands from his desk, hand over his mouth, gaze hooded. “I’ve gotta—”
>> 
>> He run-walks out, steps fumbling. Kolivan doesn’t expect him to come back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a shit fic amuse-bouche, if you will. no for real i'm so, so sorry.

Keith comes back from lunch with a stain on his collar.

He’s given up on the uniform entirely and he's wearing his usual monochrome black shirt—long-sleeve variant, his one concession to winter no matter how much Thace tries to aim him in the direction of a real jacket. The smear of white below his neck stands out more on the black than it would on the police blue.

Kolivan only notices it because Thace does, and because Thace keeps noticing it—head up, pointed stare, delicate frown, head down—rinse and repeat. It’s not bad. It’s certainly not worth that much concern, but once Kolivan notices Thace noticing it, it keeps drawing his eye too. Keith's not usually so careless.

It's an odd place for a stain, that’s all, and odd because Keith doesn’t eat lunch. It’s a drip of something faint white, almost translucent, nearly like cream. Keith doesn’t eat lunch usually, and what the hell _is_ it? The question politely knocks on the back of his mind, opens the door, and sends Kolivan’s entire day crashing down.

The next time Thace raises his head, they make eye contact, and this time Kolivan can read the nebulous panic in his eyes for what it is.

But no. Sure, he brought lunch to the—the guy, but that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean _that_. Kolivan tries to send Thace a look that says so, and that this is beneath them, and that if they ignore it it’ll go away on its own. Keith goes on patrol at two. They only have to survive for an hour and they're all clear to never wonder about it again.

Life isn’t that good to them. That’s the moment Reg gets back from lunch and ruins everything.

He sits across from Keith, which means he doesn’t have to walk by Kolivan and Thace before sitting down. If he did, if he _had,_ he would have seen the twin looks of desperation in their eyes—or Thace’s look of desperation, and the look of general disapproval that Kolivan’s been cultivating for years to keep everyone too scared to make idle chatter and ask dumb questions.

Dumb questions like: “Hey, Keith. You’ve got something—there.” Reg motions to the edge of his own collar.

They watch in horror as Keith glances down, goes red, utters a soft, “Oh,” and then—

And then pulls the hem of his shirt up to suck the smear off.

Kolivan feels his mouth open, his eyes bug out, his soul pass from his body. He sees Thace’s visage transform out of the corner of his eye into someone who's just been handed a glass of what they were told was hot chocolate but turned out to be straight lemon juice. He looks as if, in the process of spitting out said lemon juice, he got some in his eyes, too.

As if to drive the blade in deeper, Keith pulls the cloth from his mouth and says offhand, still red-cheeked, lips wet, “Sorry. Shiro’s had a hard week. I wanted to do something special for him.”

Kolivan’s vision tunnels in on the cold coffee in the mug on his desk, stomach flipping. Maybe there was something off in it. Maybe everything’s been off. Ten good years with Keith, nothing worse than the occasional ill-fated suitor, has led to this day. This, the end of all things. He can’t look at Thace, can’t imagine what he’s feeling. He’s always considered Keith his own.

It’s hard to watch them go out in the world, Kolivan imagines. It’s harder when they come back looking like—that. They haven’t even met the man yet. God willing, they never will. He’s a shadow across their lives.

Thace is the first to move. He stands from his desk, hand over his mouth, gaze hooded. “I’ve gotta—”

He run-walks out, steps fumbling. Kolivan doesn’t expect him to come back; mentally he rearranges Keith’s patrol so Thace doesn’t have to go with him.

“Is something up with him?” Keith looks genuinely concerned. The spot where the stain was is dark wet with spit and maybe they’ll have to find some way to get him to throw away the shirt. It’s no different from the other six he owns just like it, but for their own peace of mind it needs to go.

Kolivan searches for words. “He missed breakfast.” A lie. A bad one. Does Thace eat breakfast? Does Thace have a kitchen? It’s one in the afternoon. The takeout bag of whatever Thace had for lunch is conspicuously sticking out of the trash by his desk. Kolivan is too far away to hide it. He thinks about it and decides he wouldn't bother, even if he was.

But Keith doesn't notice. He's still staring after Thace, all puppy-eyes. “I should have saved him some. I got Shiro a box of those cream filled donuts at the bakery on fourth. He loves them.”

Oh. _Oh._

Well. If Kolivan were a better man, he would text Thace something about pastries and Keith and hope he got the message, but that would also mean acknowledging that they ever thought otherwise. That would mean acknowledging that they ever thought about it at all. No.

Thace will figure it out eventually. They all have their own demons to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come send me anon hate for this fic specifically on [tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally part of a longer chapter which will eventually be added but a sweet anon needed a pick me up so here's this, for now!!

Keith doesn't let him help with the move. Shiro clears a spot for him in the dresser and closet, which is no real effort at all, kisses him goodbye, and when he gets home that night, Keith has filled in all the empty corners of his life. 

His apartment is bigger than Shiro needs, but when he was looking it was the closest to the office and he didn't count on getting a live-in chauffer six months into the lease. Keith is an unexpected development in every sense, but a happy one, and there's more than enough room for him and everything he brings with him. 

It's not much. A few bike posters, a whole duffle bag full of what Keith dubs “gear,” and books—more books than anything else. 

When Shiro walks in the door that evening, Keith has dinner going already. “I could have picked you up,” he says, pressing a kiss to Shiro’s cheek when Shiro leans over Keith's shoulder to see what's in the pot he's stirring with intense concentration. He's wearing one of Shiro’s shirts, unbuttoned down the front. The knee-jerk urge to run a hand down his chest jumps to the front of his mind, but there’s a time and a place.

“It’s fine. How'd it go?” He's trying to be supportive about Keith's persistent desire to never let Shiro see more of his life than he’s strictly comfortable with. Baby steps, he tells himself every day, and it’s working, little by little. Keith rolls his shoulder noncommittally and Shiro kisses Keith’s neck as his last little indulgence and then registers the pot and its contents.

“Did you put the sauce in with the water?”

It's suspiciously murky. He knows he's right even before Keith lifts up the spoon for him to try and it's an act of love that he manages it.

Shiro resurrects dinner with salvaged spaghetti and a makeshift cream sauce while Keith watches from the table, a little shamefaced—Shiro has to hide his smile more than once. So he’s not a perfect cook. He’s still there and he’s not leaving. Hunger is the best spice anyway, he reminds himself, and then has to shame himself for a moment because he’s not only thinking about food.

After dinner, Keith takes him on a tour. It’s short. Shiro tries not to be disappointed. He brought an entire shelf that’s happily out of step with the regular decor and so full of paperbacks there’s a double layer of them and additional stacks on top—as if Shiro’s shelves don’t have enough room. There are dvds and a new player and a few other pieces of electronic detritus, but Shiro stops on the books and drags his fingers over the bent spines and worn edges. He lets it go without comment but in his head he’s making a reading list over it all.

When they get to the bedroom, he hovers behind Shiro with something that takes a moment for Shiro to identify is nervousness, and another moment to identify the cause of.

“I don't need to keep the posters,” Keith tells him when Shiro eyes the black frame leaning against the wall. As far as motorhead posters go, it's classy. Classic art, classic bike, a little stylized, but that's all totally irrelevant. Between that and the books, Shiro’s riding high. All these pieces of Keith, his. 

Shiro pulls him in by the hips and keeps him there, close enough that Keith has to look up to meet his eyes. Instead of answering, instead of arguing, instead of explaining in short words that this is Keith's home as much as it's Shiro’s and Keith should know that, he pulls Keith into a kiss and puts heat into it. Keith likes actions over words.

Keith was already spending more nights over than not, but there's no urgency to it anymore. They can sleep in and stay up late together and a hundred other little things. They part, Keith’s hands grasping at Shiro’s shirt over his chest, his eyes bright. Shiro lets Keith pull him to the bed, settling between Keith’s legs when he sits. 

“Is that my shirt?” Shiro teases. He fingers the collar of it. Even with the sleeves rolled part way up, it dwarfs Keith. “Are you stealing my clothes now?”

The heat doesn’t go out of Keith’s eyes, but he grins. “You left it out.”

Shiro ducks his head, trying to play serious, but he can’t keep the laugh out of his voice. “I knew you were only in it for the clothes.”

Keith punches his shoulder, but lets Shiro bend and catch his lips again. The only sorrow is that the shirt is already unbuttoned and there’s nothing left to expose, except—

With a hand in the middle of his bare chest, Shiro pushes him back until he’s lying flat, watching from under his bangs as Shiro drags his palm down his abdomen, indulging in the way Keith’s muscle jumps at the touch. This deep into their relationship, he can tell what Keith wants by the way his breath hitches. 

Shiro drops to his knees and knows he's guessed right when Keith makes a heady sound and parts his legs wider on reflex. He lets his hand linger, teasing the edge of Keith’s briefs before he presses forward, lips brushing over the cloth. Keith's not hard yet, but he twitches at the motion. It's rare to see him so keyed up—an opportunity he doesn't want to waste. 

And they have all night. Keith will still be there in the morning and the morning after that.

When he looks up, Keith is staring down at him, blue eyes gone dark. Shiro mouths over him with unmistakable intent, teasing, not breaking eye contact. Keith bites at his lip. He brings a hand to Shiro’s hair, pushing his bangs back like he wants a better look, but there's a tug to it that shoots down Shiro’s spine. 

“Clothes,” he orders, nudging Shiro’s shoulder with his knee. He can be demanding when he wants and part of Shiro lives for it. Keith asking is good, but Keith  _ telling  _ is better. He obeys without question, sits back on his heels and strips his shirt. There's no show about it; Keith likes to watch him undress, anyway. It was one of the first things between them—the way Keith's eyes followed his hand loosening his tie at the end of the day, Keith sitting on his couch beer in hand, thighs shifting as he watched. 

When he's done, he kneels again and pulls the briefs off Keith's legs, tossing them in a pile with his own shirt. There's a new bruise on Keith’s hip from the move or any of the myriad of other oddities in Keith's life he's too quiet to share. Shiro presses a kiss to it and drags his lips over, kissing down. Now he's hard; it takes nothing to make Keith's legs jerk up.

Shiro grips him around the thigh, pulling his leg over his shoulder and holding it there and Keith's heel goes to the center of his back, urging him on.  He's quiet in bed. Has been, from the start. Anything Shiro can do to get him going is a little victory. He brings Keith off slowly, until his chest is heaving and he's muffling his sounds a hand against his mouth, right on the edge.

Shiro pulls away to kiss the inside of his thigh and then hide his smile when Keith digs his heel in and whines. “Shiro…” 

So serious—like his need to get off is Shiro's responsibility and the highest good he could achieve. He's not wrong at this moment, but Shiro likes to see him like this: a little petulant, a little needy. If he teases enough, sometimes Keith breaks the best way. Shiro's gotten him to beg once, and it was good. He's gotten Keith to order him, too, and that was good in a different way. He wonders if it's the voice he uses on the job and then wonders if he'll ever find out and has to shift at the pang of need it sends through him.

He stands to strip the rest of the way. Keith makes a sound against his hand and opens his legs wider. 

Already the odd tension he carried in his shoulders is gone, and Shiro hadn't noticed it was there to begin with but the absence is striking. He looks less like a stray that's found somewhere warm to curl up for the night and more like he's ready to stake a claim on his space in Shiro's life. 

They keep it low and slow. Keith is a powerhouse, but a day hauling boxes across town is exhausting on an existential level. It’s different than their usual in the best way; by the end, Keith is only half there. Shiro has to pull pulls his hand away from his mouth and behind it, Keith’s face is a wreck. His hair is mussed, eyes half-lidded and unfocused, lips red and over-wet.

“You good?” Shiro asks, surprised when his voice comes out an octave too low and rough.

Keith’s mouth works and then forms the smallest, “Yeah.”

Shiro cleans them both up and buries him under the covers with the air conditioning on high because he can. Keith mumbles something about sleeping in and Shiro hums his agreement, presses a wet kiss to his neck and nuzzles into his hair, settling in behind him. 

It’s bliss, but it’s starting to become clear Keith isn’t going to show him more of his life than he has to. They'll sink together, meld lives, and he'll only ever have as much of Keith as Keith wants to give him. It’s not intentional, not selfish—more that Keith sees his own existence as an afterthought to all of this. 

It’s not. And he needs a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/post/175093844335/omg-you-are-honestly-the-sweetest-person-ever-im)]


	7. Chapter 7

This is what he knows: Keith has worked at the precinct for his entire adult life, with the same group of people. He doesn’t bring them up often, but when he does it’s with affection and a smile. It’s one of the rare topics that can get him reliably animated, though he still seems embarrassed when he realizes it. They’re his family by every definition. Shiro needs to meet them and more important, he needs to make a good impression. The best impression.

Keith’s birthday has come and gone. They spent it at home, rented a bad movie and then another, until both their bodies had molded into the couch and into each other, the manifestation of pure laziness, and then Shiro dragged him off to bed all lazy-warm and well fed. They'd passed out because the week was long and busy and tiresome, but he made it up to Keith in the morning.

The birthday is out as an excuse, but anniversaries are still a thing. Everything significant is still months out, but an excuse is an excuse. After he figures out a date, it’s a simple matter of what to bring. He’d have to be dumb to walk in without an olive branch. Donuts occur to him for the briefest, most horrible moment, only because Keith loves them and they’ve bonded over breakfast pastries, but then he realizes he’d be walking into a precinct with the physical manifestation of every bad cop joke ever. No. He needs something that makes a statement.

He needs something _homemade_.

On his lunch break he starts going through recipes on the computer in his office and realizes only once he’s thirty tabs deep that he might be out of his depth. Vanilla cake he axes for being boring. Carrot cake is out because the first time Shiro made carrots, Keith pushed them around his plate the entire meal and then forced himself to eat them one by one like a man condemned, until Shiro reached over and forked them all onto his own plate.

Chocolate is safe, he decides. Keith’s ordered it twice on date night and savored every bite with a distracting amount of dedication.

Still--he’s up to fifty tabs by the end of the day. It should be illegal for one thing to have so many varieties. It keeps him up that night as he stares at the ceiling, ingredients pounding through his head until he decides his kicking the sheets around is doing neither of them any favors and sneaks out to the living room to peruse more aesthetic recipe websites with mindless, frantic energy.

The story sections are too long. He needs a cake for his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s terrifying family--not the personal history of every person who’s attempted to make a cake.

He can envision the officers’ faces. In his mind, they are each one a monolith twice Shiro’s size, three times Keith’s, armed and grizzled, and they look at Shiro like he’s a bug. _I was a SEAL_ , says one. Another says nothing, but the tattoos on his neck say everything, though Shiro knows nothing about the military. Come to think of it, he doesn’t know the proper address for a police officer, even. He googles that, too, and doesn’t find anything definitive. _Sir,_ seems safe at least.

“What are you doing up?” Keith asks from the hallway.

Shiro glances at him and then does a double take because Keith was in boxers when Shiro left him and now there’s one of Shiro’s shirts hanging off his shoulders instead. Cunning.

“Nothing,” Shiro says and tabs out. It’ll keep.

 

* * *

 

He settles on a recipe that seems simple enough. It has seventeen ingredients and calls for a stand mixer and a cuisinart, neither of which he has, but he can improvise.

The morning of, he sends Keith to work with a kiss and an excuse about a mid-morning meeting and a late start. In actuality, he took the day off. When Lance asked, Shiro mumbled something about his anniversary and hoped the fear sweat on his brow wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t fear--not really. It was more of a general and healthy amount of nervousness for something that could go poorly on an epic scale.

Once Keith is gone, he’s left with the daunting task of carrying through with his plan. It seems, for a moment, insurmountable. Cooking he can do. Cooking, he’s great at, and better since Keith came along and gave him a reason to try. Baking... not so much.

He loses track of the cups of flour when he decides midway through that he should put on an apron, but it’s too late to try measuring again because he added the other dry ingredients first, and it’s a long, sad slide down from there. The final batter is lumpy and passably tasty. He pops it in the oven and goes to find something worth wearing.

The new button up he bought for the occasion is black, but once he sees it in the mirror, it looks too severe, too dramatic. He tries on the blue next, but it washes him out. Twenty minutes later, he’s accumulated a small pile of discarded shirts and is approaching crisis. In desperation, he decides to try changing from slacks to jeans to see it that’ll help. It does, but then he has to retry all the shirts, and then try fitting different ties to match before he decides a tie is too formal and gives that up, too.

A broken man, he sits on the duvet amid the wreck of his closet. Their closet. Keith’s clothes sit neatly to one side. Little by little, they’re migrating and mixing with Shiro’s clothes and it makes him smile when he gets ready in the morning to have to push aside his jackets. It doesn’t matter, he realizes. This is like the cake--what matters is Keith’s preference and Shiro’s dignity, in that order.

Folded in a drawer next to Keith’s tees there’s a small collection of Shiro’s worn dress-down long sleeve shirts and one faded green number that Keith appreciates. Shiro pulls it on and feels for the first time like he can take a deep breath--

Of smoke.

“Oh, fuck,” he mutters and sprints to the kitchen.

He ends up skidding on the wood floor in his socks so far, he hits the adjacent counter hard enough to bruise. He’s too late; the cake is a total fatality. When he pulls it out, it smokes pathetically under the fan for a few seconds, a bubbling black sludge at the bottom of the pan. The smell of it burns his eyes.

After that, there’s only one thing to do.  

 

* * *

 

By the time he walks into the precinct, he’s out a hundred dollars and had to throw himself on the mercy of a hostess at a restaurant that didn’t technically open until five and had no reason to give him a cake save the bribe. The bribe was probably excessive. He could have been honest, could have said, _This is for my boyfriend who has at least five dads and all of them are going to want to kill me on sight, please give me this cake, please,_ but the three previous and tragically cakeless patisseries had nearly broken his spirit.

By the time he walks into the precinct, he has nothing left to lose

But he has a cake. And he’s as ready as he’s going to get.

 

* * *

 

The man walks in on a Tuesday morning. It's a slow day. Most of the precinct is present, so most of them are there to see the man’s entrance. He’s not ugly by a long shot—by the longest shot. The man at the door is, in every way, devastating: long, long legs, a chest that looks like it tolerates the cloth stretched over it as its one concession to a mortal existence, an arm that Thace wants to examine on a scientific basis because there's no way that can be real. The other is an empty sleeve tied off below the shoulder. His salt and pepper hair fades to full white over his forehead in a boyish forelock, but he can't be much past thirty.

“You said he was ugly,” Reg says under his breath, a shade from bereaved. “You said he was _hideous_.”

Kolivan doesn't reply. Revelations stack up, one on top of the other.

In their minds, Kolivan had built a sort of demonic specter. He was the sole witness to Keith's secret paramour, a sight so profound and horrific he could barely talk about it. They had a secret emergency meeting that day at lunch and all Kolivan could say was that Keith had been seen with another man. Was he old? Older, Kolivan had said, voice heavy with the unspoken. Was he big? Bigger than Keith. Was it serious?

Kolivan's gaze had gotten dark and he'd leaned in over the table. _Arm around his waist._

Serious, by any definition.

They had, on Kolivan's word, assumed this was a second Incident. The first involved an ill-fated bouquet of roses three Valentine’s Days back. After a week of sleuthing, the suspect flowers were traced back to the son of a local mob boss who'd taken a shine to Keith after a bust.

Kolivan had them confiscated and sent them in to be tested for—something. He couldn't say what. Presumably, they're still in their own box in evidence, exiled for all eternity. It had been less about the person looking and more about the lookee and the uncomfortable fact that Keith had blushed when the boss’s son was brought up the next time Ulaz had managed to do so.

Of course, it might have been a fever. He's always been hard to pin down.

The red on his face now isn't. It's joy. The man steps in the room and Keith, ever vigilant, already has eyes on him. Thace only notices after the blush has time to establish itself. It's... rosy.

“Is he an underwear model?” Reg asks softly, eyes still glued to the six feet of muscle and cake box standing by the door.

Antok thumps him on the shoulder. Across the room, Kolivan’s optimistic expression dissolves. There's no amount of food or biceptal integrity that can move him. Thace doesn’t know what he expected, what any of them expected, but the man at the door is perfection manifest and when his eyes meet Keith’s, he smiles. He smiles, with fondness and something a little shy. It transforms him from upper crust magazine advertisement material to dopey teen seeing his date at the top of the stairs on prom night.

“Keith.” If he were a dog, his tail would be wagging.

It's the moment they've all been dreading since the first morning Keith came in the precinct wearing last night's clothes and the mark of someone else's mouth on his neck. Every eye in the precinct pivots from the man to Kolivan. Thace is close enough to see the twitch of Kolivan's jaw, the vein pulsing at his temple as he tries to stare down the man whose gaze is occupied elsewhere in extreme terms.

“We don't allow civilians in the precinct,” Kolivan says, toneless.

It's a blatant lie, and a poor one. Thace understands the sentiment, but he's still riding the high of realizing The Menace is half-model, half-large and friendly retriever dog, and the kind of man who would bring Keith baked goods for no reason at all--a good man, maybe, hopefully.

The man takes a very tentative step forward. He's toeing a line no one but he and Kolivan can see.

Kolivan frowns at him, at the room, at the state of existence they all live in. “You… have to fill out a ten eighty-two form.”

There's no such thing.

“It's Keith's boyfriend,” Zethrid yells from the reception, helpfully.

Before they can argue further, Keith shakes out of his stupor and barrels past Kolivan. They watch it play out like a Greek tragedy. It's performance art--Keith's concerned gaze, Kolivan's slow morph from implacable stone to shocked affront.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Keith moves in close and puts a hand on the man's cheek, willfully ignoring the box the man is holding and the sound Kolivan makes behind him, like he's been punched.

The man laughs, and oh, it's a good one. “No—Keith. It’s fine. Do you know what day it is?”

Keith gives him a blank stare.

“It's our anniversary.”

There's a perfect moment of silence. He can’t mean a first anniversary. They know when it started--it hasn’t been that long. Keith turns the most fascinating shade of red when the man grins at him.

“Did you forget? It's just four months; don’t worry.” The man pushes the box toward him and Keith takes it, still looking like he's not convinced this isn't a dream he's having.

“What is it?”

“Cake,” the man says and darts a look up at the rest of the room, and clarifies carefully, “It's chocolate.”

Point two to him. Keith will eat anything, but chocolate and he have a special bond. There's a joke they don't tell in front of Keith that credits the nearby corner store’s off-brand discount crunch bars as the sole reason they got Keith on the force to begin with.

As if in a trance, Keith starts to open the box right then and there and then freezes, realizing what everyone else realizes in that moment: there's a cake on the premises and it's not leaving the building alive.

Keith looks back up at the man. “You didn't have to do this, Shiro.”

Shiro. The name kind of rolls off the tongue. Keith’s said it before, but that was like pulling teeth and this time it's sweet. _They're_ sweet. Thace blinks and shakes the disbelief out of his head. Keith is a scrappy kid turned lethal detective with the general aura and attitude of something that was transplanted from a different time and place, but in that moment he’s a man, standing in front of another man, with stars in his eyes and a cake in his hands.

“I wanted to do something nice, and—” he stops, meets Kolivan's eyes over Keith's shoulder, doesn't gulp, “—meet everyone.”

The man knows, Thace realizes. He knows what he's walked into. This is as close to a meet-the-parents moment as he's ever going to get. It would never occur to Keith to tell him, which means he figured it out on his own and walked in anyway.  Thace knew in a distant sense that it was serious, but this is something else.

No one will ever be good enough for Keith, that’s simple fact, but Keith thinks this man is, and this man is brave enough to walk into a building of officers armed with nothing but cake and his own charm.

“Brave,” he mutters to himself. Antok grunts in agreement.

Keith blinks and blinks and then jumps with a little, “Oh.” He turns, eyes the room, but he keeps the cake box in front of him either as a shield or in the hopes that if he keeps both eyes on it at all times, no one will be able to steal it or kick out the man standing behind him. “This is Shiro.” The introduction comes out a little flat, the man in question giving a small wave over Keith's shoulder. “He’s my…” He trails off, going more red and mumbling a word that is either boyfriend or best friend and then he spins and grabs Shiro’s hand.

“Well—Shiro, everyone. Everyone, Shiro. I think that's it.” He starts dragging Shiro toward the door. “I'll be back after my break,” he says over his shoulder.

Shiro doesn't budge. A wrinkle creases his nose just above the scar as he stares at where Keith's hand it's tugging him uselessly. “You aren't going to introduce me? Keith, come on—”

Keith looks up at him desperately, mouthing something Thace isn't close enough to see, eyes darting around the room. Shiro mouths something back and it devolves into a whispered discussion where Keith is trying very hard to drag his boyfriend and his cake out the door and to safety and Shiro is shaking his head, smiling. It's an admirable resistance. Thace isn't sure he could manage it.

Shiro pulls away from him, smiling at the room with eyes that might be a little too bright, but points for effort.

“No, no—” Keith whisper yells and makes a mad grab for Shiro's empty sleeve as Shiro steps around him.

Shiro dodges it, already holding out his hand as he walks toward Kolivan. “Shiro. It's an honor to meet you, sir.” Behind him, Keith freezes with both hands still up in the air, outstretched as if to hold back a tide that's already overtaken him.

Kolivan looks at him, looks at the hand, looks at Shiro, and then seems to realize that courtesy dictates a single course of action. He takes it.

Neither man moves for a solid four seconds. Thace realizes this is the best Kolivan is going to be able to manage for as long as it takes his brain to reboot and takes the chance to step between them, angling for a handshake of his own.

“Thace,” he offers in what he hopes is a suave voice. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

The man’s grip is solid, warm. He's putting off an aura of perfect calm. The only part that gives him away is the bead of sweat on his temple. Thace tracks its progress for a moment and then slides his gaze. Over Shiro's shoulder, Keith is still frozen in time, looking at the two of them like they're a bomb whose counter froze at the one second mark.

“All bad, I'm sure,” Shiro laughs. “Thanks for helping Keith with the move,” he adds offhand. “Sorry I couldn’t be there.”

The air leaves the room. Behind him, Thace hears someone drop something heavy that might be a coffee thermos. Kolivan goes from merely still to statuesque.

“The move?” Thace hears someone ask and realizes it was his own voice only seconds after the fact.

“Yeah. The—” Shiro darts a nervous glance at Keith, “—the move? Yeah? Keith?” His voice drops an octave and he whispers, “ _Keith_.”

“I was going to tell them! Eventually.”

“You told me they helped you move.”

Keith folds his arms, looks down. “In the sense that… they were with me in spirit… I guess…?” He scuffs the floor with one boot and it makes that hideous squeak that Kolivan categorically banned years ago. Even Thace feels a needle of hurt at the revelation. Ulaz has a truck and they could have used a precinct dolly, rigged up a lift system, maybe set up a shift schedule or made a Facebook event out of it. A chat. A group chat. Reg would know how.

Keith seems to realize his explanation isn't one and that there's thin ice and got water and whatever he's skating on its a few degrees warmer. He looks down at the box in his hands and then holds it up. “You guys want cake?”

 

* * *

 

The cake lives only for five beautiful minutes. It was decorated with exquisite chocolate roses, some dipped in red and gold foil. God knows where Shiro got it. The man’s placid smile doesn’t leave his face the entire time.

Thace almost feels guilty about eating two pieces himself. Keith watches every bite disappear with the beaten-puppy look he reserves just for them--and for Shiro, evidently, who hands Keith his piece when he sees the pathetic bend of his eyebrows. It’s Keith’s third piece. He’s going to be intolerable for the rest of the day.

“Sorry,” Shiro offers as Keith starts stuffing his face. God knows where he puts it. “I tried to make one at home. It didn’t go so well. I think we need a new cake pan”

Keith shrugs, feet kicking back and forth where he’s sitting on his desk, happy as a clam. “I didn’t know we had a cake pan. That bad?” he mumbles around his plastic fork.

Shiro cringes. “Yeah.”

With one booted foot, Keith kicks out and taps at Shiro’s arm. “Can’t be worse than I am.”

Shiro catches his foot. “You’re not that bad,” he says softly, and Keith ducks his head to smile. Shiro bends a little, too, mimicking him. That's something people in love do, or so These heard. It's one of the signs they're trained to pick up on, a little facet of human habit and body language. This is textbook—and more than. Shiro says something just for Keith’s ears and Keith smiles and replies.

Regris nods at them. “They’re uh… gross.”

The rest of them have formed a little desk enclave to watch and assess, a headquarters of sorts while they stake out the situation. It's not looking promising.

Shiro leans impossibly closer, almost fully leaned against Keith’s legs and hip, and whispers something in his ear that makes Keith's shoulders shake. The move exposes Kolivan's spectral corpse behind them, risen as if from death, glaring from his open office door. He declined the cake—his loss and more for them—and seems stuck to his chair now. He’ll get past it in time.

They tried to find something on Shiro. Thace isn’t proud, but it was the first thing they did when they got a name out of Keith--searched through the system, tried to find his record.

He doesn't have one. He's spotless. The worst thing is a nebulous reference to a space camp fiasco, but that's no crime. Of course, Keith would fall in with a nerd. They had a pool going, but this wasn't on the list. In fact, it veered more toward a possible Romeo and Juliet thing with the crime boss’s son, or maybe they'd see him in a photo on a tabloid stand on the way to the precinct one morning, hanging off the arm of some star.

Or nothing. Thace's optimistic bet was on him settling down with a dog in blissful and unattached perpetuity. Maybe a cat, too, at some point. Take things slow.

This isn't slow. This looks like it's on the fast track to an elopement—the kind that gets a write up in the paper, with soft-focus photos of the two of them leaning together in front of some sunlit vista.

But they already live together, so maybe it's moot.

“How did you two meet?” Antok asks a little bravely. It's a question they all want the answer to—they tried to work it out of Keith for weeks, but the most anyone got out of him was that Keith had “picked him up” and no one wanted to dig deeper to see if he meant it literally or not.

Shiro laughs and goes a little red around his perfect cheekbones. “Oh--that. Keith saved me,” he says, over-serious. “Picked me up right out of the street.” It’s meant to fluster Keith and it works. Thace feels that old pride rise in him again.

Antok thumps Keith on the shoulder. “Sounds like him.”

It does. Shiro tells the story with a little glee, though he stutters over the part between being swept off his feet and Keith giving him a ride to work. It's not a story he's had a chance to tell much, judging by the enthusiasm, the unpracticed way he goes about it. He trails off toward the end on a line about Chinese takeout, gaze lost somewhere in the middle distance. By the end, two facts are clear: this isn't a fling, and they should have known. Keith doesn’t do anything by halves.

“Keith. You should go talk to him,” Thace says after a moment and nods to Kolivan's open office. That band aid is going to hurt no matter how long he waits to try and rip it off, so better then and there. Knowing Keith, he could dodge it for a year or two.

Keith doesn’t look convinced, but Shiro presses his palm to the center of Keith's back. The gesture is familiar and gentle. Keith looks up at him, nods, and slides off the desk.

“Wish I knew how to do that,” Thace mutters under his breath.

Shiro grins. “He can be just a little stubborn.”

Thace snorts. Stubborn wishes it had what Keith has. Once Keith is out of sight, Thace motions to his desk and steps away, subtle-like. Shiro follows, but there's a question in his eyes as he settles across from Thace. It takes Thace a half minute of rooting around in drawers to find what he's looking for, and then he pushes it to Shiro across the desk.

The album is small, but stuffed to bursting. Shiro opens it with the same care one would a puzzle box with a haunted clown inside, but it's nothing so bad and it's been opened to the same page so many times it falls to it by worn-in habit, to a photo of Keith in uniform. Navy cloth over his chest cut tight to fit, gold buttons and white gloves and the hat he couldn't stop messing with no matter how many times Ulaz his hair for him. The pants weren't meant to fit so tight, either, but that had to improvise a little.

Shiro glances behind him, sees the door to Kolivan's office is still closed, and then pulls out his phone and grabs a picture one-handed. He glances up after, seeming to remember only after the fact who he’s sitting in front of, but Thace laughs.

“I know, I know. Here—you’ll love this.” He pulls the album back to his side of the desk and leafs through it until he finds the page he’s looking for. The photo in question is shoved behind another and a folded piece of paper that’s started to yellow and go brittle with age.

It's Keith as a kid, back when he was all vinegar, before his father died and he became something different. He’s turned halfway away from the camera shot, talking to someone inside a door that’s propped open, but not enough to see inside, all of it cast in the glow of a streetlight. His hair is shaggy and the clothes he’s wearing look like he borrowed them from an afterschool special.

Shiro stares at the picture like it's gold. “He's—god. He's so _cute_.” He glances up at the still-closed door and then back to the photo, mouth open a little.

“Same hair though,” Thace mutters. On an impulse, he almost tells Shiro to keep the picture, but he's not that generous--and who's to say Shiro will even be a thing next week. He’s nice and all, but really--who can blame a man for hoping.

“How old is he?” Shiro asks, gaze still stuck on the photo.

Thace pretends to think about it a moment and then says, “Sixteen.”

Sixteen and four months and ten days. It's a picture they took doing recon for a bad sting on an ugly case. The boy stood out as a weak point. The boy stood out because Thace had seen him before and because he was already notorious for petty theft and a few attempts at something more ambitious. The part the photo doesn’t show is the bruise on the other side of his face. He got brought in for fighting half a dozen times. His file was a permanent fixture on Thace’s desk for years.

Thace reaches over and takes it back, tucks it behind the confiscated file page, and looks at Shiro. Really looks. He’s got kind eyes and the scars say something, even if he can’t decide what. He’s not going anywhere--not without a fight. Not without some pain, and they’ve already had a taste of that and came out better for it.

The station is a family. It was one before Keith ever came along, but he’s become a kind of rallying point. He’s the closest thing most of them are going to have to a son, and Thace in particular. He had his will rewritten before Keith joined the force.

“I think you and I should get a drink sometime.”

It’s not a question--not really. Shiro understands. He nods and takes the card Thace hands him. “He’s filling in for a late shift on Friday.” It's not a question either.

 

* * *

 

 

They meet at a bar two blocks down from the precinct, one Keith won't pass on patrol. It's a little seedy, a little quiet, but as good a place as any for what they need it to be. Thace grabs a stool at the far end of the bar, away from the window, and a glass of something neat and strong while he waits for Shiro. Not for long, it turns out; he’s punctual, and that’s another point on the board.

He shows up in office wear and it’s such a far cry from what he wore to the precinct, it takes a moment for Thace to recognize him. The suit and tie and swept back hair cast him uppercrust, and he wears it so well it makes it seem for a moment like every other suit in existence is in error by having two full sleeves.

Keith and he must make a pair like this. Thace tries to picture it and can’t.

Shiro sits and orders a beer with more than one nervous glance, as if Thace is going to judge him for his choice of beverage. That horse left the barn a while ago--he could order chocolate milk and Thace would have to lump it along with all the rest. It’s nothing so bad.

The silence is horrid, but neither of them try to make small talk for an awkward moment. It’s going to be awkward. There’s no way around it.

“I take it this is a shovel talk?” Shiro asks finally. His eyes are fastened to his glass, but he’s smiling.

Thace takes a long sip and then shakes his head. “No. I trust him to handle that.” He doesn't, though. None of them do, though it's less a matter of distrust than of trusting him with all things—their lives, the law, and even with the new Dodge the department got last Christmas—but not with this. Never with this. “I need you to understand—I'm telling you this because I don't think it matters. Not to me, not to Keith, and not to you.”

Shiro stares at him, rapt, drink forgotten. Thace pushes over the file, wordlessly. Shiro looks at it like it might bite and then pulls it closer with one finger until he can read the label on it. Keith’s name in neat, red letters. “What—” He flips it open, looks long enough to get the gist, and then pushes it back to Thace so fast he knocks his drink in the process. “I don't need to see that. He can tell me when he’s ready.”

“...He’s never going to.”

Shiro rolls his shoulder and takes a heavy sip of his drink, like he needs it. “Then that's his choice.”

He means it. That's a surprise. Thace can read it in the tilt of his head and the way his hand is pressed flat to the bar, a little pain bleeding through the pose, as if he's gearing himself up for the long inevitable. Guilt wriggles through the pit of Thace’s stomach, but this was the point. “Good,” he says, and then repeats it for his own sake, “Good.”

“What? Was that a test?”

Thace shakes his head. “No. He had a hard time as a kid. I’ll tell you about it if you want to know. The first time we met he tried hustle me for cash.” And the second, and the third. “He was a punk.”

Shiro laughs a little. “He’s still a punk.”

“True enough. But he’s ours.”

It's easier after that. He's genuine. The fondness in his eyes is almost tangible and it leaks into his voice as he talks. They both order another drink and Thace rolls into a story about trying to take Keith clothes shopping and getting in a fight over Heelys and Shiro trades a story about Keith trying to make dinner. Two drinks turn into three, and then four, and then Thace pulls up the secret album of forbidden Keiths they keep on the precinct’s Facebook. It’s mostly candid shots of him stuffing his face with horrific amounts of food and a few of him looking sour in uniform and even one of him trying to catch a rogue chicken downtown.

Thace loses track of drinks and then of time and it’s not until Shiro’s phone goes off that they both remember Keith gets off at ten and they are in the most extreme trouble. They part with a mutual hug, Shiro books it to a taxi, and Thace considers the entire endeavor a success.

He might be son-in-law material. One day.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been years since he regretted a night so much. His pounding headache follows him to work and then sits with him at his desk and reminds him he’s the third youngest at the precinct now and that’s not young at all.

The first hour passes in a haze. Maybe he’s earned it. Antok offers him a pat on the shoulder and Ulaz hands him a glass of water and a couple aspirin. They don’t dent his pain, but the day is looking up by the time ten rolls around. It’s looking up until the moment Keith walks in the door.

No--he storms in. He comes in the door like it’s a bust and he’s ready to arrest everyone in the place single-handed. “You,” he says, rounding the corner.

Thace squints and looks around his desk. “Me?”

“ _You_. Shiro—” Keith steps up to his desk, puts both hands down flat. He’s got bags under his eyes. “He threw up. Twice.”

Thace puts his head in his hand and nods. They’re in the same boat then. It makes him like Shiro more, somehow. “I bet,” he mutters, and Keith slams his hands down. Too loud, too loud.

“You got my boyfriend drunk. I can’t believe—”

“That’s the first time you’ve called him that.” Thace tries not to smile, but it’s the first real reason to he’s had to all day. “I think you should bring him to taco night.”

Keith stares at him, opens his mouth, works it aimlessly, and then snaps it shut. He stalks away and Thace knows he’ll have hell to pay for it later, but somehow it’s worth it. It’s all worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[fic on tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/)] [[fic on twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir/)]
> 
> I'm getting drunk and eating sushi so if there are mistakes... just assume they're the sesame seed of this salmon-slice-of-life. The crunch, if you will. Enjoy, babes.

**Author's Note:**

> For some ungodly reason this now has some incredible art by the lovely and sweet slouph of [badboy keith](http://slouph.tumblr.com/post/168691659063/badboy-keith), [sassy badboy keith](http://slouph.tumblr.com/post/168834220031), and another based on the premise that they would [switch outfits](http://slouph.tumblr.com/post/168770319516/cop-shiro-x-office-keith) for a Halloween party and come out looking incredible, and some [very nice NSFW art](http://wipr0n.tumblr.com/post/168675964158/salary-man-playbook-1-under-the-desk) that is the sole reason Keith has a tattoo. 
> 
> And this art by hauntedorangemobile of [beat up Keith](https://hauntedorangemobile.tumblr.com/post/168743759575/unwillingly-gave-my-life-to-this-sheith-au-by) bringing food to the office that's literally ruined my life.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Come request stuff or question my sense of humor on [tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com). Let me know if you have anything you want for this AU in particular!


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